Curve fitting for synchronizing readers of hidden auxiliary data

ABSTRACT

A curve fitting method is used to synchronize a reader of embedded data in a media signal. A circular reference signal is embedded in the media signal. After geometric distortion of the media signal, the reference signal is distorted, yet still detectable. The amount of distortion is derived by detecting the reference signal, and applying a curve fitting method from which the distortion is calculated.

RELATED APPLICATION DATA

This patent application is a division of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/299,244, filed Nov. 18, 2002 (now U.S. Pat. No. 7,076,082) which is a continuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/895,867, filed Jun. 28, 2001 (now U.S. Pat. No. 6,483,927), which claims priority to U.S. Provisional Application No. 60/278,049, filed Mar. 22, 2001. These applications are hereby incorporated by reference.

The subject matter of the present application is related to that disclosed in U.S. Provisional Application No. 60/278,049 filed Mar. 22, 2001, and U.S. Provisional Application No. 60/256,629, filed Dec. 18, 2000, which are hereby incorporated by reference.

TECHNICAL FIELD

The invention relates to multimedia signal processing, steganography and data hiding.

BACKGROUND AND SUMMARY

Digital watermarking is a process for modifying physical or electronic media to embed machine-readable auxiliary data into the media. The media may be modified such that the embedded code is imperceptible or nearly imperceptible to the user, yet may be recovered through an automated reader process. Most commonly, digital watermarking is applied to media signals such as images, audio signals, and video signals. However, it may also be applied to other types of media objects, including documents (e.g., through line, word or character shifting), software, multi-dimensional graphics models, and surface textures of objects.

Digital watermarking systems typically have two primary components: an encoder that embeds the watermark in a host media signal, and a decoder that detects and reads the embedded watermark from a signal suspected of containing a watermark (a suspect signal). The encoder embeds a watermark by altering the host media signal. The reading component analyzes a suspect signal to detect whether a watermark is present. In applications where the watermark encodes information, the reader extracts this information from the detected watermark.

Several particular watermarking techniques have been developed. The reader is presumed to be familiar with the literature in this field. Particular techniques for embedding and detecting imperceptible watermarks in media signals are detailed in the assignee's co-pending application Ser. No. 09/503,881 and U.S. Pat. No. 6,122,403 which are hereby incorporated by reference.

One category of data hiding methods embeds auxiliary data by quantizing samples or other features of a media signal such that the quantized sample falls within a quantization bin corresponding to a desired auxiliary message symbol. The message symbols may be binary or M-ary. Preferably, the modification made to the sample to move it into the quantization bin is constrained to stay within a desired perceptual distortion tolerance. This perceptual distortion tolerance enables the auxiliary data to be hidden in a manner that is imperceptible to the viewer or listener of embedded media content. One form of such auxiliary data embedding and reading is referred to as Quantization Index Modulation or QIM. Examples of this form of data hiding is disclosed in WO9960514A1: SYSTEM, METHOD, AND PRODUCT FOR INFORMATION EMBEDDING USING AN ENSEMBLE OF NON-INTERSECTING EMBEDDING GENERATORS and corresponding U.S. Pat. No. 6,233,347; which are hereby incorporated by reference.

To read embedded data, the samples of content expected to include auxiliary data are evaluated to determine which quantizer or quantization bin they represent. Symbol errors may result when samples get mapped to a different quantizer or quantization bin relative to the one used to encode them. Error correction encoding tends to mitigate symbol errors if the distortion is not significant or does not impact the embedded data adversely.

Quantization embedding techniques may be performed on samples or other signal features in various signal or transform domains of multimedia signals. To reduce the impact of distortion, the embedding domain may be chosen such that samples in that domain are relatively robust or invariant to expected types of distortion.

A challenge associated with data hiding methods, including quantization embedding techniques, is synchronizing the reader with the embedded data after the host signal carrying the embedded data has been distorted, e.g., geometrically or temporally distorted. Such forms of distortion have the effect of distorting the quantization bins. Thus, if the same quantizers or bins are used to interpret embedded data symbols in the reader as in the embedder, the reader may map distorted samples to the wrong quantizer or bin. Additional types of distortion that specifically effect quantization embedding techniques include the addition of an unknown offset or multiplication by an unknown gain.

This document details methods of synchronizing embedded data readers in quantization embedding systems for multimedia content. In the embedder, a reference signal and message symbols are encoded using a quantization embedding method. In the reader, the distorted data samples are evaluated to derive quantizers or quantization bins. The reader then uses the derived quantization information to convert the distorted data to raw symbol estimates. These raw symbol estimates are then evaluated to detect the presence of the reference signal. Once detected, the reference signal is used to determine the distortion and compensate for it by adjusting the quantization information or distorted data such that message symbols may be decoded more accurately.

Certain forms of offset and gain distortion make it difficult to recover hidden data embedded in an audio or image signal by quantization techniques. To compensate for this offset and gain distortion, an embedded data reader analyzes a statistical distribution (e.g., a histogram) of feature samples in an audio or image signal suspected of having hidden auxiliary data to derive an estimate of quantizers used to encode a reference signal (deriving an estimate of the quantizers is equivalent to estimating the offset and gain distortions). The estimated quantizers then recover the reference signal, and the reader uses the reference signal to determine and compensate for geometric or temporal distortion, like spatial scaling and rotation of image data, and time scale and speed changes of audio data. After compensating for such distortion, the reader can then more accurately recover hidden message data using quantization techniques to extract the message. The reference signal is preferably repeated in blocks of the image or audio data to enable synchronization at many points in an image or audio data stream.

Further features will become apparent with reference to the following detailed description and accompanying drawings.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

FIG. 1 is a diagram of a quantization type steganographic embedder that embeds a hidden reference signal in media signals for synchronization.

FIG. 2 is a diagram illustrating an example of quantizers for embedding binary symbols of a hidden reference signal by quantizing host signal features into quantization bins corresponding to the binary symbols.

FIG. 3 is a diagram of a quantization type steganographic reader that uses the hidden reference signal to synchronize reading operations.

FIG. 4 is a diagram of a histogram used to estimate quantizers from a distorted or corrupted media signal suspected of being embedded with hidden data by a quantization type steganographic embedder.

FIG. 5 illustrates an affine transformation of a circle in a plane into an arbitrary ellipse.

FIG. 6 is a flow diagram illustrating an example of a watermark embedder that embeds a substantially imperceptible circular reference signal into a host image.

FIG. 7 is a flow diagram illustrating an example of a circular reference signal in the Fourier magnitude domain.

FIG. 8 is a flow diagram illustrating a detector compatible with the embedder of FIG. 6.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

Synchronization in Quantization Based Data Hiding Systems

This section describes techniques for synchronizing auxiliary data readers in quantization based data embedding systems.

FIG. 1 is a diagram illustrating a quantization type data embedder that embeds a reference signal for synchronization. The embedder receives a host media signal such as a block of audio or image data. For the sake of illustration, we describe embedders that operate on samples in the spatial domain of a digital image block (e.g., luminance samples) and the time domain of a digital audio block. Alternatively, the block of image data may be transformed into samples in a DCT, DWT, DFT, Fourier Mellin, Gabor, autocorrelation or some other transform domain. The block of audio data similarly may be transformed into subbands, frequency coefficients, a time-frequency spectrogram, autocorrelation domain, etc. In such cases, the quantization embedder modifies samples in the transform domain, and an inverse transform returns the data to its perceptual domain for rendering in a form that is visible or audible to humans.

In some implementations, the embedder may be integrated with audio or image compression operators that transform the signal into a frequency domain, remove data in a lossy quantization process, and perform some form of entropy coding on the resulting data block. In this case, the quantization type data embedder operates on the frequency domain data after lossy compression.

In an embodiment for images, the reference signal comprises a two-dimensional array of binary symbols (1, 0). Similarly, the message signal comprises a two-dimensional signal of binary symbols. The reference signal has frequency domain characteristics that facilitate its detection while minimizing its impact on perceptible distortion in the embedded image. In particular, the reference signal comprises an array of impulse functions in a transform domain (e.g., autocorrelation domain, Fourier domain). These impulse functions have pseudorandom phase. When transformed to the transform domain, the reference signal has peaks that are detected using peak detection methods (such as those described later in this document), and then aligned with reference peaks to calculate orientation parameters, such as rotation and scale. The detected peaks are aligned with reference peaks using correlation filtering.

In an embodiment for audio data, the reference signal comprises either a one-dimensional or a two-dimensional array of binary symbols (1, 0). The two dimensional form refers to an implementation where the audio block is transformed to a 2D spectrogram, and the samples in the 2D reference signal correspond to samples in the 2D spectrogram. Similarly, the message signal comprises either a one or a two-dimensional signal of binary symbols. The reference signal has characteristics that facilitate its detection while minimizing its impact on perceptible distortion in the embedded audio block. In one implementation, the reference signal comprises a PN sequence. Like the image case above, the reference signal may have transform domain characteristics that facilitate detection of the reference signal in a transform domain.

For an example of embedding data in a spectrogram of an audio signal, see U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/661,900, filed Sep. 14, 2000, entitled WATERMARKING IN THE TIME-FREQUENCY DOMAIN, which is hereby incorporated by reference. Quantization based embedding and reading of steganographic data as described in this document and those incorporated by reference may be performed in the time-frequency domain as detailed in application Ser. No. 09/661,900. In particular, the calibration and/or synchronization signals described in Ser. No. 09/661,900 may be embedded and read using the techniques described in this document.

The message signal is preferably error correction encoded. Some examples of error correction codes include convolutional codes, turbo codes, and BCH codes.

The message signal may be integrated with the reference signal, such as by convolving or multiplying it with the reference signal. For example, the reference signal may serve as a carrier signal for the message signal, where the reference signal is used to spread spectrum modulate the message signal in a multiplication, convolution, exclusive OR or exclusive NOR operation combining the message and reference signal. For example, the message signal may be formed into a signal that has reference peaks in a transform domain, such as the autocorrelation domain or Fourier domain. These reference peaks serve as a reference signal to enable detection by correlating a transformed version of extracted message data with a known reference signal.

The message and reference signal may be embedded in mutually exclusive samples of the host media signal such that the two signals do not overlap. Alternatively, the message and reference signal may be embedded in feature sample domains that overlap.

The quantization type embedder reads the reference and message signals and maps elements in these signals to corresponding samples in the host signal block. If the message and reference signals are combined (e.g., by multiplication or convolution), then the embedder operates on the elements of the composite message and reference signal. It then quantizes the corresponding host sample according to the binary symbol to be encoded. One binary symbol corresponds to a first quantizer, while the other binary symbol corresponds to a different quantizer. The selected quantizer modifies the corresponding sample to fall within a bin for that quantizer that minimizes the distortion to the sample.

The above auxiliary data embedders trade-off perceptual distortion and robustness by adjusting the size and spacing between quantization bins. These embedders may be implemented using uniform scalar quantizers. For example, each binary symbol is associated with a quantizer having bins of width delta and offsets relative to bins of the other symbol of delta/2. This simple form of quantizer facilitates the derivation of the quantizer parameters in the reader.

Different types of quantizers may be used for the reference and message signals. In particular, the reference signal is embedded using a scalar quantizer, while the message signal is embedded with a vector quantizer (e.g., a trellis coded vector quantizer).

FIG. 2 shows an example of quantizers for embedding a binary reference signal by quantizing features of the host media signal. One quantizer has a series of bins of size delta that correspond to a first binary symbol, while the other quantizer has a series of bins of size delta, offset by a distance delta/2 relative to the first quantizer, that correspond to a second binary symbol. The host signal feature, which has a value varying over some dimensions, such as time, space, time and space, frequency or frequency band, etc. is quantized at discrete samples to fall within a quantization bin corresponding to the reference signal values to be encoded in those samples. In this example, the reference signal comprises the sequence 1101001, and is repeated in the host signal features of the block being encoded.

The reference signal does not have to be represented as a binary sequence. For example, if the implementer wants the reference signal to vary smoothly over time or space, he can choose a larger symbol alphabet, where each symbol has a corresponding quantizer. Each of these quantizers can be represented as another quantizer axes in FIG. 2.

FIG. 3 is a diagram illustrating an auxiliary data reader that uses the reference signal to compensate for geometric/temporal distortions in an embedded media signal. The embedded media signal is received from a distortion channel, sampled and segmented into blocks. The distortion channel imposes geometric and/or temporal distortions on the embedded media signal.

First, the reader derives the quantizers for the embedded media signal. In an embodiment for images, the reader performs a statistical analysis of the watermarked feature samples to produce a statistical distribution of the samples from which quantization bins can be estimated. In particular, it creates a histogram for a block of sampled image data, such as the one shown in FIG. 4. The histogram assigns image feature samples to bins based on their values. The spacing between the bins provides an approximate spacing for the bins of the quantizers of the symbols used to encode the reference signal. It is not yet clear which quantizer corresponds to which binary symbols.

As noted above, the relative distance between bins in the embedder is delta/2. Due to the distortion of the watermarked signal, the distance between bins is now alpha*(delta/2), where alpha is a factor that represents the scaling of the watermarked signal due to distortion.

Based on an analysis of the histogram, the reader assumes a first assignment of quantizer to symbol, and then applies the quantizers to the samples to get raw estimates of the embedded symbols. It then searches for the reference signal in the output of the quantizers. In particular, it correlates the reference signal with the signal formed by the raw estimates to detect the presence of the reference signal in the embedded media signal.

As a specific example for images, consider the case where the reference signal forms peaks in the Fourier magnitude domain. The reader performs an FFT on the image formed by the raw estimates to get Fourier magnitude data and then transforms the data to log polar coordinates. The reader correlates the transformed data in the log polar space with a log polar representation of the reference signal. The location of maximum correlation provides an estimate of scale and rotation.

In a general case, if the correlation peak is not greater than a threshold, such as an absolute threshold or a threshold relative to the next highest peak, then the reader tries the alternative quantizer symbol assignment. If neither quantizer assignments yield an acceptable amount of correlation with the reference signal, then the reader considers embedded data not to be present. In the special case where the difference between one quantizer assignment and another is a phase shift, then a correlation process need not be executed for each possible quantizer assignment because the correlation is performed in the Fourier magnitude domain, where phase information is not used.

If the reference signal is deemed to be present, the reader uses the rotation and spatial scale distortion parameters to realign the image block. A process of correlation-based matched filtering can be used, along with knowledge of the embedded reference signal phases, to estimate the translation distortion undergone by the embedded image. The quantizers used to encode the message symbols are then used to decode the embedded message signal. As noted, this may include generating raw symbol estimates for samples in the block and then performing error correction decoding to recover the message signal.

A similar approach may be used for audio signals. Consider an example where the reference signal is a pseudorandom number (PN) sequence of binary symbols. The reader uses the derived quantizers to convert the audio block to raw symbol estimates. It then correlates the PN sequence with the raw symbol estimates to determine whether the reference signal is present in the media signal. The reference signal has peaks in the frequency domain to ascertain time scale. In particular, the signal formed from the raw estimates is transformed into a frequency domain. If the reference signal is present, there should be tell-tale peaks, which could be shifted due to time scale modifications (time scale modification, linear speed increases/decreases). The position of the peaks relative to the reference peaks provides an estimate of the time scaling distortion. Then any time-shift distortion may be estimated by correlating the reference signal to the (re-scaled) media signal. The reader uses this estimate to re-align the audio data and then applies the quantizers used for message symbols to extract the message signal.

The above examples refer to quantizing image sample or audio sample features to encode a reference signal and a message signal. The reference and message signal may be encoded in different feature samples, temporal/spatial resolutions, frequency bands, etc. For example, the reference signal may be encoded in time domain samples at a particular sampling rate for audio, or spatial domain samples at a particular sampling rate for images (still and video). The message signal, on the other hand, may be encoded in other transform domain samples, such as subbands, wavelet coefficients, DCT coefficients, DFT coefficients, a log polar or log-log coordinate system mapped from a time-frequency spectrogram, frequency domain, temporal domain, or spatial domain, etc. The reference and message signals can be encoded in any of a variety of domains created by transforming the signal from its perceptual domain to another transform domain. This new domain may represent features of host signal, such as power, autocorrelation, energy, phase, etc. that are particularly robust to expected forms of distortion, yet enable the embedded data to remain imperceptible in the perceptual domain of the watermarked signal. Preferably, the transform domain for encoding the reference and message signals should be selected so that the quantized features are relatively invariant or robust to expected forms of distortion for the application of the watermarking system.

Synchronization Using Curve Fitting

This section describes a method for elliptical curve fitting and related applications. One application is to compute affine transform parameters that describe geometric transformation to an image. In particular, this approach inserts a circular pattern (or multiple circular patterns) into an image, and after the image undergoes geometric transformation distorting the circle, the elliptical curve fitting technique fits the distorted circle to an ellipse and derives the affine transform parameters that characterize the distortion. These parameters may then be used to reverse the distortion and return the image to its original geometric state. This particular method may be used in digital watermarking applications, where a watermark encoder embeds the circular pattern in a manner that makes it imperceptible or substantially imperceptible to a viewer of the image. A watermark decoder then recovers elements of the circular pattern, fits them to an ellipse and derives the affine transform parameters.

A circle in a plane has the property that any affine transformation applied to the plane will transform the circle into an ellipse. A linear transformation (i.e., without translation) applied to the circle centered at the origin will transform it into an ellipse also centered at the origin. Another property of a circle pattern is that it is rotationally invariant. The advantage of this property is that estimation of rotation can be delayed until the rest of the affine parameters (scale, differential scale and shear) have been estimated.

An equation of a circle in a plane is, x ² +y ² =r ² where, r is the radius of the circle.

Applying an affine transformation (with zero translation) to the circle can be represented by a change in the coordinate system

$\begin{matrix} {\begin{bmatrix} x \\ y \end{bmatrix} = {\begin{bmatrix} c_{1} & c_{2} \\ c_{3} & c_{4} \end{bmatrix}\begin{bmatrix} x^{\prime} \\ y^{\prime} \end{bmatrix}}} & 2 \end{matrix}$ The parameters c_(i) determine the affine transformation.

Substituting the expressions for x and y from Equation 2 into Equation 1, and simplifying, one gets the equation

$\begin{matrix} {{\frac{x^{\prime 2}}{\left( \frac{r^{2}}{c_{1} + c_{3}} \right)} + {\left( \frac{{c_{1}c_{2}} + {c_{3}c_{4}}}{r^{2}} \right)x^{\prime}y^{\prime}} + \frac{y^{\prime\; 2}}{\left( \frac{r^{2}}{c_{2} + c_{4}} \right)}} = 1} & 3 \end{matrix}$ which is the geometrical equation of an ellipse. This ellipse is centered at the origin and the major axis angle of the ellipse makes an arbitrary angle with the X-axis of the new coordinate system.

FIG. 5 illustrates an affine transformation of a circle in a plane into an arbitrary ellipse. An automated software or hardware detector can compute the affine transform from knowledge of the parameters of the circle (radius) before applying the transformation and knowledge of the parameters of the ellipse (major axis, minor axis, major axis rotation) after applying the transformation.

The following sections illustrate such a method for computing in the context of a digital image watermark embedder and reader.

Embedder

FIG. 6 is a flow diagram illustrating an example of a watermark embedder that embeds a substantially imperceptible circular reference signal into a host image. The embedder starts with a host image 100. The embedder defines a reference signal to be embedded into the image so that the reference signal is substantially imperceptible or imperceptible (102). This reference signal is typically pre-defined, but it may also be adapted to the host image or to an auxiliary message (such as an N bit binary or M-ary code) to be embedded into the image.

The reference signal is comprised of elements that form a circle in a particular domain, such as the spatial image domain, the spatial frequency domain, or some other transform domain. For the sake of an example, consider a case where the elements are impulse or delta functions in the Fourier magnitude domain. The reference signal comprises impulse functions located at points on a circle centered at the origin of the Fourier transform magnitude. The points are randomly scattered along the circle, while preserving conjugate symmetry of the Fourier transform. The magnitudes of the points are determined by visibility and detection considerations. To obscure these points in the spatial domain and facilitate detection, they have known pseudorandom phase with respect to each other. The pseudorandom phase is designed to minimize visibility in the spatial domain.

In this implementation, the definition of the reference signal only specifies that the points should lie on a circle in the Fourier magnitude domain. For this circular grid, the choice of the radius of the circle and the distribution of the points along the circle are application specific. For example, in applications dealing with high resolution images, the radius can be chosen to be large such that points are in higher frequencies and visibility in the spatial domain is low. For a typical application, the radius could be in the mid-frequency range to achieve a balance between visibility requirements and signal-to-noise ratio considerations.

The distribution of points along the circle can be random or based on a quadrant or octant symmetry as needed by the application. Points on the circle should be selected such that they are as close to the integer lattice as possible. This will reduce the errors during the ellipse fitting and estimation process required for determining the affine transform parameters.

For this particular approach, it may be more advantageous to have fewer points with higher energy than to have several grid points with lower energy. Higher energy points will be easier to locate and isolate in the Fourier magnitude domain of a watermarked image. FIG. 7 illustrates an example of a circular reference signal in the Fourier magnitude domain.

The embedder embeds the reference signal into the image (104). One way to embed the reference signal is to add it to the host image in the spatial image domain, or in the Fourier domain. To reduce the perceptibility of the reference signal, the samples of the signal in the spatial or spatial frequency domain may be perceptually adapted to the hiding characteristics of the host image. For example, the samples may be multiplied by corresponding elements in a gain vector whose elements are functions of the signal activity in a local neighborhood of samples around those being modified by the embedding of the reference signal. The greater the signal activity (e.g., busyness or texture), the better the data hiding characteristics of the image. Preferably for digital watermarking applications where perceptibility is a design constraint, the gain vector elements are a function of sensitivity to the human perceptual system. The lower the sensitivity, the higher the gain.

Another way to embed the reference signal is to quantize sample values in the image according to an embedding function that defines how elements in the reference signal are to be mapped quantization levels or quantizers. For example, the presence of a reference signal element may be set at one quantizer or set of quantization levels, and the absence of a reference signal element may be set to a second quantizer or set of quantization levels. This embedding may be performed using scalar quantizers on spatial domain samples, for example. To encode the reference signal, a sample or group of samples at a particular element in a circular pattern are quantized using a first quantizer. The other samples are quantized using a second quantizer.

Regardless of the specifics of the embedding process, the result is a marked image (106) carrying the reference signal in the form of a circular pattern. The embedding process may be repeated in discrete blocks of the image. For example, the image may be tiled into 256 by 256 pixel blocks at particular resolution, like 300 or 600 dpi, and the embedder may embed the reference signal into each tile.

Detector

FIG. 8 is a flow diagram illustrating a detector compatible with the embedder of FIG. 6. The detector receives a potentially marked image 120, for example, by scanning an image of a printed object suspected of having a marked image. The scanning process, along with other image processes, typically introduce some geometric distortion represented as an affine transform, or at least locally affine (e.g., piece wise linear geometric distortion).

For the sake of illustration, consider the case where the embedder inserted the reference signal as a circular pattern of impulse functions in the Fourier magnitude domain. In this case, the detector transforms the image into the Fourier magnitude domain (122). Of course, if the embedder defines the circular pattern in some other domain, the detector transforms the image into that domain.

Next, the detector detects elements of the reference signal by identifying the highest magnitude impulse signals in the transform domain (124). This process may include one or more pre-processing steps to enhance detection of the circular elements and differentiate them from the host image. Examples of these steps include summing blocks of the image and filtering the samples in the image to de-correlate the reference signal from the host image. Blocks may be summed in a transform domain, such as the Fourier domain, depending on the domain in which the reference pattern is embedded. For example, if the circular pattern is in the Fourier magnitude domain, the detector may sum blocks in the Fourier magnitude domain. The detector knows the characteristics of the reference signal (126), such as the frequencies, number, and location of the elements in the circular pattern. It uses this criteria to pre-process the image and identify candidate points in the pattern.

First, a filter is used to de-correlate the reference signal from the host image. The detector applies this filter to the image and then computes the Fourier magnitude of the resulting image. The filter helps in accentuating reference signal points.

One example of this type of de-correlating filter operates as follows. For each image sample, it compares the sample with each of its eight neighboring image samples. The filter replaces the value at the center sample with a value that is incremented each time the center sample value is greater than a neighbor value and decremented each time the center sample is less than the neighbor value. In particular, for each comparison, the filter increments by a value of 1 if the center sample is greater than its neighbor, it increments by a value of −1 if the center sample is less than its neighbor, and makes no change otherwise. The output of the filter will be between −8 and +8 when an eight neighborhood (3 by 3 sample region) is used in the filter implementation. Such type of a filter has a number of applications such as edge detection, signal enhancement, etc. in signal processing and operates on different media types (image, video and audio) and samples in various domains. For digital watermark applications, it may be used to estimate the original host signal and watermark signal, where the watermark signal is applied as an additive, antipodal PN signal.

The filter discussed in the previous paragraph may be implemented in variety of ways. One particular implementation makes comparisons between the center sample and each neighboring sample, and transforms the result of this comparison to an increment or decrement value (e.g., +k or −k, where k is a constant like 1, 2, 3, etc.). The filter sums each of the increment/decrement values from each neighbor, and then replaces the center sample value with the result of the summation. This type of filter can be implemented efficiently using a look up table. For example, the comparison operation is performed by subtracting the center sample value from a neighbor sample value to produce a difference value (−255 to +255 for an 8 bit sample). The result is then fed to a look-up table, which maps the difference value to an increment/decrement value and outputs that value. The filter sums the look-up table output for each neighbor in the neighborhood, and replaces the center sample with the result of the summation. This neighborhood may be the eight neighbors in 3 by 3 block of samples, the adjacent samples in a one-dimensional signal, the horizontally and/or vertically adjacent neighbors in a two or more dimensional signal, etc. The size of the neighborhood may be increased as well. The look-up table may be used to implement a variety of non-linear filters efficiently.

In this implementation, reference signal detection comprises extracting peaks from the Fourier magnitude data. There are numerous approaches for peak detection and extraction. For example, one could isolate points with high energy relative to the average energy in the Fourier magnitude plane. Alternatively, one could isolate points with high energy in a small local region. Statistical measures such as the mean, median, variance, etc. are usually employed to reliably detect peaks. One example of a peak detection and extraction strategy is described by Nicolas Devillard. See N. Devillard, “Infrared jitter imaging data reduction algorithms”, Jun. 21, 1999, which is hereby incorporated by reference. A copy of this paper is attached.

After the de-correlation process, the detector proceeds with peak extraction as follows. Let μ be the mean of all values in the Fourier magnitude plane. Let σ be the average absolute deviation from the median. A binary image the same size as the Fourier magnitude plane is created by assigning one to all pixels which have a value above T=μ+k σ and zero to all other pixels. k is an adjustable parameter that depends upon the amount of noise. In our implementation a value of k=10 was used. The threshold T is repeatedly reduced by a factor of k σ/100 until the number of peaks found is just greater than N, where N is the number of points in the circular reference signal pattern. The non-zero points in the binary image are the extracted peaks.

The detector then fits the extracted peaks to an ellipse (128). The particular method is a variation of the least squares approach described by Fitzgibbon et al. See, A. Fitzgibbon, M. Pilu, R. Fisher “Direct least-square fitting of Ellipses”, International Conference on Pattern Recognition, Vienna, August 1996; Extended version available as DAI Research Paper #794; and M. Pilu, A. Fitzgibbon, R. Fisher “Ellipse-specific Direct least-square Fitting”, IEEE International Conference on Image Processing, Lausanne, September 1996, which are hereby incorporated by reference. For this approach, it is beneficial to reflect the extracted points over the entire Fourier magnitude plane, taking care of the conjugate symmetry. Reflecting the points before feeding them to the ellipse fitting algorithm will ensure a better least squares ellipse fit. Note that reflection is not a necessary condition, the approach could also be applied to points located in a portion (e.g. half plane or quarter plane) of the Fourier domain. Copies of these papers are attached.

The ellipse fitting procedure in this implementation is based on the least squares ellipse-fitting technique proposed by Fitzgibbon et al. This technique uses a direct least squares method to fit an ellipse to a set of data points in a plane. The technique is based on using the singular value decomposition to minimize the algebraic distance between an ellipse and the data points subject to elliptical constraints. The solution is non-recursive and always yields an ellipse.

Once the detector has found the ellipse, it derives the parameters of the ellipse (130). From these parameters, the detector derives affine transform parameters that represent the distortion between the reference circle and the distorted reference circle (i.e. the ellipse) found in the potentially marked image.

The equation of the ellipse is specified in terms of the affine parameters and the radius of the circle (which is known, since the reference signal was based on it). Till this stage, the detector ignores the rotation of the points. The detector knows that the points lie on the fitted ellipse, but does not know where they lie with respect to the original reference signal. A partial affine transformation can be computed from the parameters of the fitted ellipse. We call this transformation partial since it does not include the effects of rotation. Next, the detector performs an inverse geometric transform of the candidate points into the shape of a circle (132). The detector applies an inverse affine transform to the image such that the fitted ellipse in the Fourier magnitude domain is converted into a circle with the same radius as the radius of the reference signal.

The detector then recovers the rotation angle parameter. In one approach for getting rotation, the detector samples along the detected circle, and performs a one dimensional correlation (134) to find the rotation angle. In particular, the detector samples the Fourier magnitude along this circle to obtain a sampled 1-dimensional signal. This 1-D signal contains peaks corresponding to the reference signal points. The detector gets the rotation angle (136) by a 1-D correlation between this signal and the 1-D signal corresponding to the reference signal Fourier magnitude sampled along the reference signal circle. The detector computes the rotation angle from the correlation peak offset.

Alternatively, rotation can be recovered using a Fourier-Mellin procedure in the log-polar domain. For this approach, the partial affine transform estimated from the ellipse is inverted and applied to the frequency domain data so that the extracted points lie on a circle but are rotated with respect to the reference signal. Rotation is recovered through correlation in the log-polar domain. The estimated rotation, along with the partial affine parameters estimated from the ellipse are then combined to give the full affine transform parameters.

Having determined these affine parameters, the detector may use these parameters to correct for differential scale and rotation in the spatial domain or some other domain, and then perform additional stages to get other parameters, such as translation. In particular, the detector may perform phase correlation (138) (e.g., phase only match filtering) between the reference signal and the marked signal, corrected for scale, shear and rotation distortion. The coordinates of highest correlation provide the translation parameters (140).

In the case where the watermark embedder inserts the reference signal using quantization modulation as described above, the detector first performs a quantization to convert image samples into a binary image representing the presence or absence of the reference signal. The detector then fits the detected reference signal to an elipse, and derives the affine parameters as described above.

Images having the reference signal can undergo severe degradation due to image manipulations or noise. Such degradation can adversely affect the estimation of the affine parameters. Noise or degradations can cause spurious peaks to appear in the Fourier magnitude domain. The ellipse-fitting technique of Fitzgibbon et al. is substantially affected by spurious points that are not on the ellipse. Even a few spurious points can alter the ellipse-fitting result to such an extent that the resulting affine parameters are not accurate enough for successful watermark detection and decoding.

There are a number of potential enhancements to the method described above. To improve the method, one implementation discards outliers in the ellipse fitting process as follows:

-   1. start with N_(i) reference point candidates detected in stage 124     of FIG. 4; -   2. get the best ellipse fit for the N_(i) points; this is ellipse     E_(i); -   3. compute distance from each point to E_(i); -   4. sort N_(i) points by distance from E_(i) in descending order; -   5. discard point that is at the maximum distance from the ellipse     E_(i); -   6. if the difference between the ellipse fit at the previous     iteration and the current iteration is less than ε, go to Step 9 -   7. N_(i+1)=N_(i)−1 -   8. increment i; i=i+1 -   9. go to Step 2 for next iteration -   10. stop

Another modification to this approach includes using knowledge of the reference signal to discard points that are highly unlikely to be part of the reference signal.

An initial implementation of the above method uses 12 reference points in a quarter plane of the Fourier magnitude space. The embedder subdivides the image into 128 by 128 blocks and transforms the blocks into a 128 by 128 Fourier magnitude space. As a further enhancement, each of the N points extracted in stage 124 may be assigned a weight according to their magnitude value and location in the Fourier transform domain. These weights could then be incorporated within the ellipse fittting procedure to improve both the robustness as well as the accuracy of the fit.

As a further enhancement, the reference signal may be designed to carry auxiliary, hidden information. For example, each reference point may correspond to a message value. A particular sequence of reference points at a particular distance from each other on the reference circle may be used to signal a start of a message. Then, the remaining reference points can be used to carry multiple bits of information. For example, the presence of reference points at particular locations may correspond to binary values. Error correction coding and decoding may be used to encode the message symbols and decode the message symbols. Multiple circles may be encoded into the content by tiling the circles in blocks of image data (e.g., putting a circle in each block).

Further, information may be encoded by representing different messages using different arrangements of circles.

As a further enhancement, each tile of the watermark signal could contain a unique arrangement of points along a circle, with the radius of the circle being constant in all tiles.

As a further enhancement, the reference signal may be used as an indicator of another watermark signal, or even convey key information, specifying how or where to decode another watermark signal. For example, the reference signal may be used as a calibration signal that enables the detector to determine the affine transform parameters, correct for the distortion, and then decode a message signal from the image data (e.g., a spatial or frequency domain watermark message signal).

The reference signal may be used in video signals in a similar fashion. For example, the reference signal may be encoded into the spatial domain or spatial frequency domain of selected frames. Also, the reference circle may be encoded in the time-frequency spectrogram of an audio signal.

Concluding Remarks

Having described and illustrated the principles of the technology with reference to specific implementations, it will be recognized that the technology can be implemented in many other, different, forms. To provide a comprehensive disclosure without unduly lengthening the specification, applicants incorporate by reference the patents and patent applications referenced above.

The methods, processes, and systems described above may be implemented in hardware, software or a combination of hardware and software. For example, the auxiliary data encoding processes may be implemented in a programmable computer or a special purpose digital circuit. Similarly, auxiliary data decoding may be implemented in software, firmware, hardware, or combinations of software, firmware and hardware. The methods and processes described above may be implemented in programs executed from a system's memory (a computer readable medium, such as an electronic, optical or magnetic storage device).

The particular combinations of elements and features in the above-detailed embodiments are exemplary only; the interchanging and substitution of these teachings with other teachings in this and the incorporated-by-reference patents/applications are also contemplated. 

1. A method of encoding a reference signal into an image comprising: defining a reference signal comprising signal elements in a circular reference pattern; and steganographically embedding the reference signal in perceptible content of the image such that geometric distortion of the image is derived by detecting the signal elements, fitting the detected elements to an ellipse and deriving affine parameters of the geometric distortion from the ellipse.
 2. A computer readable medium on which is stored instructions for performing the method of claim
 1. 3. A method of encoding a reference signal into an image comprising: defining a reference signal comprising signal elements in a circular reference pattern; and embedding the reference signal in the image such that geometric distortion of the image is derived by detecting the signal elements, fitting the detected elements to an ellipse and deriving affine parameters of the geometric distortion from the ellipse; wherein the reference signal carries auxiliary hidden information.
 4. The method of claim 3 wherein the reference signal carries the auxiliary hidden information by varying location of reference points in the reference signal.
 5. The method of claim 3 wherein the reference signal carries the auxiliary information by varying an arrangement of reference patterns.
 6. A method of encoding a reference signal into an image comprising: defining a reference signal comprising signal elements in a circular reference pattern; and embedding the reference signal in the image such that geometric distortion of the image is derived by detecting the signal elements, fitting the detected elements to an ellipse and deriving affine parameters of the geometric distortion from the ellipse; wherein the image is part of a video signal.
 7. A method of synchronizing a reader of data embedded in an image comprising: extracting a reference signal from the image comprising signal elements in a reference pattern; the reference signal being steganographically embedded within perceptible content of the image; fitting the detected elements to an ellipse; and deriving affine parameters of the geometric distortion from the ellipse.
 8. A computer readable medium on which is stored instructions for performing the method of claim
 7. 9. The method of claim 7 wherein the image is part of a video signal.
 10. The method of claim 7 wherein the reference signal is extracted by quantizing the image to map samples of the image into quantization bins and identifying elements of the reference signal in the quantized image.
 11. A method of synchronizing a reader of data embedded in an image comprising: extracting a reference signal from the image comprising signal elements in a reference pattern; fitting the detected elements to an ellipse; and deriving affine parameters of the geometric distortion from the ellipse; wherein the reference signal carries auxiliary hidden information.
 12. The method of claim 11 wherein the reference signal carries the auxiliary hidden information by varying location of reference points in the reference signal.
 13. The method of claim 11 wherein the reference signal carries the auxiliary information by varying an anangement of reference patterns.
 14. A method of synchronizing a reader of data embedded in an image comprising: extracting a reference signal from the image comprising signal elements in a reference pattern; fitting the detected elements to an ellipse; and deriving affine parameters of the geometric distortion from the ellipse; the method including; filtering the image by applying a filter to an array of samples of the image, wherein the filter compares a center sample with each of a plurality of neighboring samples, for each comparison generates a result based on the comparison, sums the result, and replaces the center sample with the sum.
 15. The method of claim 14 wherein the filter is implemented with a look up table that maps the comparison operation to the result.
 16. The method of claim 14 wherein the reference signal is defined in a frequency domain and the samples comprise frequency domain samples of the image.
 17. A method of synchronizing a reader of data embedded in an image comprising: extracting a reference signal from the image comprising signal elements in a reference pattern; fitting the detected elements to an ellipse; and deriving affine parameters of the geometric distortion from the ellipse; wherein the reference signal is defined in a transform domain of the image.
 18. The method of claim 17 wherein the transform domain comprises a spatial frequency domain of the image. 